Canadian Wade Davis wins Britain’s Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction

LONDON – A Canadian author’s gripping account of a doomed attempt to climb Mount Everest has won Britain’s leading non-fiction book prize.

“Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest” by Wade Davis was awarded the 20,000 pound (C$32,000) Samuel Johnson Prize on Monday.

British mountaineer Mallory — the man who famously declared he wanted to climb Everest “because it is there” — died on the world’s highest peak in 1924, and debate still rages about whether he reached the summit.

Davis sets the expedition in the context of Britain’s imperial history and the trauma of the First World War.

David Willetts, a British Conservative lawmaker who chaired the judging panel, said the book is “an exciting story of human endeavour imbued with deep historical significance.”